


So Come Home.

by fearless_seas



Category: 1776 (1972), American History RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lost Love, Love, Martha was an angel, Poor Thomas, Suicidal Thoughts, This is really sad, Thomas is very lonely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 12:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9122698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearless_seas/pseuds/fearless_seas
Summary: Before Martha, Thomas spent his Christmases alone. After Martha, Thomas can't go home for Christmas. His home was Martha--and Martha is gone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A little something I cooked up because I hate the holidays. I love this ship to death. Hope you enjoy!

         Thomas Jefferson always spent Christmas alone. This did not mean that Thomas discontinued his celebrations. It was not a hatred for the holiday that had been planted in his bosom. For the past several years, on Christmas eve, he’d be seated on the ledge of his twelfth story building. He’d rest his forehead against the glass, observing the cars down below like tiny ants, crawling around to sip at the dew of the earth. Christmas was the one holiday of quietude he got. It was the one occasion in which he could gaze down and find that the streets were near empty from human contact. Everyone was a home, seating in comfort by a fire, surrounded by friendly faces and simple temptations.

         A gentle laugh, the scratch of wrapping paper being ripped from a gold box and the shocked impression as corners of their lips upturned into an unforgettable grin. A look of pure admiralty. He could remember all of his Christmases as if they were yesterday. Thomas’s legs tucked underneath him, his arms gripping his knees--he yearned with the utmost plee of his heart to examine the gentle and soft flake of an icy, calm, drift from the sky cover the pane of the windows. He willed for an arm around his shoulder, a kiss around his neck and and the warmth of love in his soul.

         It was the third Christmas without her sweater sleeves around his neck; a third Christmas without the gentle scent of pine needles because she always insisted they get a real tree.

          _“Please, darlin’-”,_ Thomas would beg to her. A shiver rolled down his spine as the creep of the icy glass spread from his forehead like the azure flames of an inferno, shrouding his skin in the most intense heat. Her heart, and her giggle in the air--contagious, it expanded like wildfire on dry woodland casting a beautiful shadow across the wallpaper of any room she was gathered in. _“-I always end up the one cleaning the needles when we have to throw it out.”_

         Her lips, the gorgeous pastel curve of her lips, a twist of her hips so intriguing and large to the eye, she was the apple in his vision and he never could gaze away. For she was his constant, and in a crowded room with alcohol brewing on the tip of his tongue--he’d always collapse into her arms and she’d always carry him home _. “Tom, that’s because you never wish me to strain myself.”_

         Recognizing that he was at a fault, he’d purse his lips and interlock their fingers in the center console on the way to the tree lot. Thomas was a deist and never understood why he continued to celebrate Christmas, he was never religious and he didn’t go to church. He’d read the bible, he knew every story but he didn’t believe. In the spaces between his brain he silently recognized that he had never gone a solitary year without the holiday. The sky was sooty, the firmament was cloudy. Thomas always loved the sky, he adored the heavens and he admired the moon as the stars they attracted. She was his moon--she was his moon and she crumbled like dust, slipping through his fingertips and seeping like sand to the earth. It was dark and it was so silent now. For Thomas was just a star, he was so humble and he was so _pathetic_. Without his moon he was lost and with nothing to guide him home he burned so bright--so crimson--catching fire and falling to the earth where he crashed.

          His eyes were shut the whole way down--the last thing he saw in his head as if a film was Martha’s silky auburn hair, the scent of her shampoo and cinnamon enveloping the room; her perfume calculated and stealing the night with her beauty. Too young to die, she was his rose. No imperfections in his eyes and the constellations she drew in the freckles on his back on the nights of sweat and heat, the only light from the rising run were his all, everything he needed right in front of him on those nights. Thomas will remember he was unable to leave the bed at daybreak.

          He will always recall everyone of his Christmases. He would recite them like poetry, feet tucked on top of her lap reading lines of books to her as she nodded off. He would throw a rope to the words she’d written in the sky, something for the brother he’d never gotten to meet, something for the father he loved too well, something for the sister who was the closest thing to heaven, lyrics for the mother turned her back, melodies for the children he’d had lost, symphonies for the wife who could never fade from his heart. He would gradually drift off, remembering everything he’d lost. He stared, his forehead posed against the glass at the cars zipping by in frantic past.

          The chill beneath his sheath, embedded and sprouted into a dying tree of possibilities--an itch that could not be found--a recital that could never fade. The hazel of his eyes glassed over the street from above and the yellow lines. His gentle breath fogged up the window in harmony, if Martha was here she would draw a bird on the pane with her fingertip. Thomas envisioned those wings, spreading, flapping their way to freedom and wondered that if he fell that they would help him fly too. But then he knew that his own wings were burnt, charred and ashed. Following the double yellow line, Thomas wondered what it would feel like to fall. The wind lapping like a gentle caresses of silver-blue waves on the beach against his ankles. His hair flown back against his neck, he wondered how he would appear when he landed. For a moment, the Virginian felt temptation peaking at the brink of his neck, it was a tingle that spread fast. 

        If he wished, Thomas could open the window right now and fly--he breathed in a sigh. A deep willowy gust of air filled his lungs. Martha would be disappointed in him. He was unable to disobey her wishes. So, he’ll suffer through the thick scent of pine needles, he’ll keep his kitchen stocked with chocolate, he’ll endure the pain of an empty cavity in his chest and he’ll walk through December, the sting of the Christmas lights and bright, satin ribbons wrapping their delicate colors around his throat and squeezing. Thomas would continue to celebrate another lonely Christmas--even if his love was not with him. Martha wished him to live on, she didn't yearn him to fly just yet or crescendo into the sky. The sea where he wished to perish had dried up, salt cracking the surface. Without much reflection, Thomas took a bite of a chocolate bar, the minty taste impressed into the skin of his lips like a tattoo. For a moment, he could taste her again, for a breath he could catch her fragrance again and for that sound with the fire crackling in embers of gold--Martha was with him.

         He couldn’t not celebrate Christmas, he was never alone at Christmas. Martha was always with him--even if he could not see. Through the glistening orbs on the branches of a separating Christmas tree, long misty eyelashes fluttering reflection, in the corner of his sight, but when he spun around: she was gone. Martha only existed in faded, flaking photographs. She was his muse, spinning around in the refrigerator light, giggles echoing in their place. Thomas simpered through it all, a mask of his disguise, because somehow, somewhere, she was watching, waiting and she when he smiled, she smiled. For the time in years the world would stop and brighten.

          _Make her happy,_ he muttered as he caught another papery snowflake frost bite the exterior, _make her happy._

         Thomas slipped from the window side, feet patting on the wooden floors, he was alone on Christmas eve- yet she was there with him, attending to him. Thomas placed more wood on the fire, the crackle of the fire reminding him of home.

         _“But you are home.”_

          A protest, a shake of his head, he wiped a tear that brushed from his eye and gently silhouetted across the skin of his cheek.

         His home was with Martha, and Martha was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Everything down to the slightest detail comes from historical accuracy. The chocolate even comes from the fact that at Martha and Thomas's wedding they had a giant chocolate cake.  
> I hope you liked it! I'm not expecting this to get many reads because it's not the type of stuff people read on this site. Writing this at three am on Christmas eve let me express- so I'm glad I wrote it.  
> My Tumblr is @sonofhistory if you are wondering. Or not, haha.


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